Monday, January 21, 2008

Well. the good news is that Ms. Anuradha Sen (my coordinator from SUN) along with Mr. Ajay Ahuja (Learning Services, SUN Microsystems) would be coming to deliver a talk on "Sun Microsystems: Choice, Innovation & Value". This will introduce the participants to Sun Technologies and offerings in terms of products and trainings.Its great to have their presence with us.I, as the campus ambassador for Delhi University, would be responsible for managing everything related to it. And am i not happy? (to say the least, i'm excited, anxious, curious, confused, thrilled)...i hope you can see the mixed feelings. :-)It would be a pleasure to meet such learned ppl and learn from their experience & knowledge. Really waiting for the big day.

Do not miss this opportunity to meet some learned people from the industry and win lots of prizes/certificates/trophies by winning competitions.

For further details on Sankalan 2008, please visithttp://cs.du.ac.in/sankalan

I take pride in introducing to you with our annual technical festival, Sankalan 2008, organized by Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi. It goes like:

We, at the Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, welcome you to our annual technical festival Sankalan 2008. Sankalan provides a platform for students pursuing IT courses all over India to come together and test their technical and non-technical skills through various events like

Technical Quiz

Web Designing

C++ Programming

Debugging Challenge

Overnight Project Designing

Algorithms etc.

This promotes the enhancement of knowledge through talks and lectures delivered by eminent speakers.Apart from technical events, there are some non-tech events also like JAM, Turn Court etc are also there to entertain people.Teams from premier engineering and technological institutes across the country are expected to participate in the festival. Besides, there will be a sizeable gathering comprising of students from various colleges of DU .

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The day before, my mail read "Lets meet tomm at 10 at office" :-) and i was amazed to see 'no' address mentioned. I quickly called up my coordinator and asked her about the plan. And the destination was Munirka.Now, for those people who do not already know, traveling in Delhi is not an easy job and that too, when you are unaware of the destination :)

So reaching office at 10 was not going to be easy. And i did not wanted to be late in the very first meeting. Always believed in "First impression is the last impression" stuff :p

So i left home at 8.15 and fighting the chilly winter, managed to reach there by 9.20, thanks to my bro (he gave me lift till Moti Bagh)Well going to Munirka from there, was no big deal and i was getting nervous with each advancing step.

Then followd some pretty good moments of my life. I saw the Sun Microsystems Logo and the board welcoming me at the 5th floor.Well i reached a lot early before time and my coordinator was not present there (obviously she has more important work to do and is not as free as i m) :-)

But getting a feel of that office was like once-in-a-lifetime experience. Though i sat at reception for a few minutes, my eyes were glued to the interiors(read infrastructure + facilities) of the office and it was really overwhelming to see a cool laptop and an Apple Machine on almost each desk !! Dont know why someone would want to play with two powerful machines at a time.(even more amazed to know that this is not a development office) Still they need all that stuff...!!But the staff over there was very friendly. They offered tea/coffee/water 3 or more times to me. and i was beginning to feel happy :-)

Meeting Anuradha Madam (my coordinator) for the first time was a pleasure. She came with another CA (Anwesha) and we had a small meeting, where we discussed about how can we create more awareness in Delhi and about communicating with other CA's.

All in all, it was something i think i will never forget. Its not like that i have not been to other companies before, but none was like this. :)

I hope they will have more meetings in future and i guess i got to meet more people working over there....

Monday, January 14, 2008

So, finally I presented my first technical demo at the campus (Delhi University) today. And yeah, it was fun.Since, it was the my first tech session, so i started off by talking about Sun Microsystems and the role they are playing in Open Source Arena.Then i talked about the Campus Ambassador Program (although many already knew about it). Also i talked about various benefits of a product/technology being open source.

The talk was attended by around 100 students from my department and 2 faculty members. Also Mrs. Anuradha Sen took out some time from her hectic schedule and made it a point to attend the talk. Would really like to thank everyone to make it a success.

The topic of the talk was "Web Services with Netbeans 6.0". The talk included a detailed description of some cool features of Netbeans 6.0 and its comparative study with IBM's Eclipse.The particular points i stressed on were:> What is Netbeans 6.0 ?> Why Netbeans ?> Whats New in Netbeans 6.0 ?> Why Netbeans rocks over Eclipse (spent 2 slides and 10 minutes) :-)

It also talked about the out-of-box support that the IDE provides, especially for Java EE 5.Then i introduced them to the world of Java EE 5(something completely new to them) by introducing to them, the basics of Web Services.It includes points like:> What are Web Services ?> Why Web Services are required ?> History of Web Services (talked a bit about the technologies before the advent of WS)> What earlier distributed systems (DCOM, CORBA, RPC) lacked : --> Interoperatability --> Firewall traversal> Simple Web Service Architecture> About w3c standards for Web Services> Advantages : --> Interoperable --> Accessible --> Economical --> Automatic --> Available --> Scalable

It followed with a demo showing them how easy it is to create, deploy and invoke a web service by using (Drag & Drop) in Netbeans.Also stated the process going behind the scenes and the role Glassfish plays in it.

Glassfish is an open-source implementation of Sun's Application Server. And i also talked about how Tomcat differs from Glassfish.

I showed them the messages that Netbeans & Glassfish displays when we run the project and while deploying and invoking the web service.What i could not show, was how to decipher those messages as it would have been really advanced for an introductory session.

I also talked about the ease with which you can use almost any application server with Netbeans and why you will never need any other Application Server as long as you have Glassfish.

I did not failed to mentioned that Glassfish is already shipped with the latest version of Netbeans and how it is fully compliant with Java EE 5.

At the end, i gave them the URLs of the various resources that they can lay their hands onto.Also Anuradha Madam talked a bit about SAI(Sun Academic Initiative) and cleared a few doubts.

I also distributed some freebies (caps and pens) to the students in the question-answer session. And some refreshments were also given to the students after the talk.

Some points to improve upon:I overshooted the time : took almost 2 hours ;)I have a tendency to divert from the topic and i did it some times during the presentation.And if you would like to add on to it, i would really like to hear. :-)

All in all, it was an interactive session with the students, an amazing experience and something that i will always remember, in spite of how many more demos/presentations i give.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

You don't believe it. Do you ?Well, if you don't, just google over "Agraj Mangal".

The very first link leads to the blog entry of Mr Arun Gupta, a technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems, and is doing some great work on technologies like Glassfish, jMaki, JRuby, Ruby on Rails, Ajax Framework......perhaps the list is endless.He is luckily a senior (an alumni of my Department) to me. (obviously lucky for me) :-)and is a very down-to-earth and chilled out person.

And a big thanks to him, Google knows me now.....A friend of mine(Anuj) happened to told me about the search...and i just said...."Wow, is that so ?"

Also i happened to visit Sun's Office(in Delhi) yesterday and the experience was just amazing. It surely needs another entry to describe my experience.

Friday, January 11, 2008

On 14th January 2008, Monday at 3 P.M. in the premises of Department of Computer Science, University of Delhi, I will be giving my first technical demo on "Web Services with Netbeans 6.0".It will introduce the IDE and will also cover the basics of web services.There are no prerequisites for attending this session.All the students are encouraged to participate and learn something new and useful.

There are prizes to be won and refreshments will be given to the participants.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Today i'm gonna talk about some really cool tools (tech toys) that software developers use to develop high-end software products.Let me start with a full-fledged Java IDE, Netbeans 6.0You might already have heard of it. Simply, because its everywhere. Simply because if you are a Java programmer and you want to make any Java Application, Netbeans 6.0 is for you.

For those who do not know, Netbeans 6.0 comes with out-of-box support for Java SE, Java EEand Java ME. It comes preconfigured with Sun Application Server Glassfish v2, thus allowingthe developer to develop Web Applications with ease and without downloading any pluginsfor supporting Java EE.Also Glassfish makes life easy as it apps running on it conforms to Java EE 5 standard and you can get an early look on Java EE 5 technologies like

Java Persistence API

JAX-WS 2.0 (Java API for Web Services)

JAXB 2..0 (Java API for XML Binding)

EJB 3.0 (Enterprise Java Beans)

Dont worry if that sounds alien to you, i just wanted to highlight the advantages of a free, open-source application server, yeah i mean Glassfish. :-)

On this note, i would like to add that Delhi University Computer Science Department Students use Netbeans/Glassfish in their projects. And yes, we are enjoying it.

Also, i would like to mention that we were introduced to this amazing world of technology (Glassfish+Netbeans) by Mr. Arun Gupta, an alumnus of our department and now working with Sun Microsystems, USA.

To start with Glassfish/Netbeans, i would suggest you to download the Netbeans IDE here and see for yourself, how easy life can be.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Well i have been recently selected as a Campus Ambassador for Delhi University by Sun Microsystems. :-)Its basically an internship program but more than that, its about being a technology evangelist. It simply means Talking, and that is something i love. Yeah, i love talking about stuff i know (that includes technology talks as well as gossiping)Sun Microsystems, as you might know, is a leader in the spectrum of Open Source, with most of its products and technologies being open source. They were the first one to quickly perceive the pervasiveness of open source technology in the software life-cycle. More than that, it allows technologies to grow at a never-ending rate with the help of online communities and discussion forums. Kudos to Sun Microsystems for that.And for those who do not know, Open Source is not limited to software. Yeah, Sun engineers have also open-sourced their chip design. :-)

So, all students from Delhi University, feel free to contact me on agraj.mng@gmail.com and i will try my best to answer your queries asap.For those who are interested, can join these groups:Java User Group of Delhi University : http://groups.google.com/group/jug-duOpenSolaris User Group of Delhi University : http://groups.google.com/group/osug-duDon't forget to introduce yourself and tell why you want to join the group.

I think thats enough for today.After all, its just the starting of my "Sun"ny days. Hope the fun continues with this quest of learning and sharing knowledge.